Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/195

Rh a cosmic mongrelism. If this is according to the law of progress, something grand will come out of it, a planetary and imposing style. But during centuries of transition the gradual loss of national individualities will seem pathetic indeed. Something of this passed through my mind as I watched, half sorrowful and half amused, an accomplished Japanese lady, the adopted daughter of an American, yielding to the influence of our Western ideals. A natural artist, like so many of her blood, she is impressible by beauty of a novel type. As far as personal The assimilative process. experience is concerned, she doubtless adds to the worth of her own life by assimilating the results of an art no more perfect in its kind than the decorative—and therefore secondary—art of her own race, yet one far beyond the power of her race to originate, or to pursue in competition with its originators. Therefore it seemed almost a pity to find her at work upon a lesson from the Art Students' League, copying in crayon an antique Apollo, with deft fingers, which to my thinking should be tracing designs in lacquer or in cloisonné on bronze, or painting some group of Japanese men and maidens, in their flexible costume, by the bayside, on a terrace, with herons stalking among sacred lilies in the near distance, and the eternal peak of Fujiyama meeting the blue sky beyond.

Meanwhile our present standard of beauty is the European, with modifications. To comprehend any other you must enter into its spirit by adoption, by